Week 6 “Chapter 4: Networked Knowledge Activities”

Dennen's forthcoming chapter is well-crafted and comprehensively explains six knowledge activities: collecting, curating, sharing, brokering, negotiating, and constructing. The chapter also explores three supporting activities often associated with these knowledge processes: networking, tagging, and annotating.

1.     Collect: In an online context, collectors save and organize digital content by bookmarking web pages, favoriting or marking items on social media, or downloading media like PDFs, photos, and music to their computers. This collection can be purposeful and formal, such as gathering resources for a specific project, or more casual, such as saving items they find interesting for later use. 

 2.     Curate: Social media curation involves creating organized, annotated collections of online artifacts. This term, borrowed from museums, archives, and libraries, describes selectively building a collection to serve a specific purpose or audience. Unlike simple collecting, which can be more casual, curation is intentional and purposeful. Curators make evaluative judgments about what to include in their collections, focusing on relevance and value rather than gathering every related item. Some collectors may also engage in curation as part of their process.

3.     Share: Sharing on social media can be seen as a form of public collecting for some individuals. For instance, on Facebook, people often share items on their timelines to retrieve them later easily. Similarly, on platforms like Twitter, users retweet content they want to revisit, knowing it will be readily accessible in their tweet history rather than buried in their feed.

4.     Broker: Knowledge brokering involves connecting different groups or networks by transmitting knowledge. The broker acts as an intermediary, transferring a knowledge artifact from its original source to a new group likely interested in it. The key difference between knowledge brokering and knowledge sharing lies in the relationships among the parties involved and their connection to the knowledge itself. While sharing typically involves someone offering something they possess for others to use, brokering implies a more active role. The broker interfaces between the original knowledge source, which belongs to others, and a new group potentially benefiting from that knowledge. This distinction, though subtle, is crucial when guiding learners on how to engage with and utilize knowledge in educational contexts. 

5.     Negotiate: Knowledge negotiation is a collaborative process where learners work together to achieve mutual understanding. This process is crucial in educational settings for fostering effective teamwork, cooperative learning, and communication skills. Class discussions, debates, group projects, and peer feedback help learners develop their ability to negotiate knowledge, enhancing both individual learning and group dynamics.

6.     Construct: Knowledge construction creates something new, often resulting from knowledge negotiation. During this process, learners jointly interact, share perspectives, and integrate diverse ideas to develop understanding or create new knowledge artifacts. This skill parallels creation in Bloom's taxonomy, representing a higher-order cognitive ability where learners synthesize information, apply concepts innovatively, and generate novel insights. It involves critical thinking, creativity, and collaborative effort, fostering deeper learning and innovation in educational contexts. 

Supporting activities

 Networking, tagging, and annotating are not standalone knowledge activities but are closely related to knowledge activities. Networking primarily supports sharing and brokering, while tagging and annotating are associated with collecting, curating, and sharing.

1.     Networking involves establishing connections with people and resources, which is essential for success in other knowledge activities. While not a knowledge activity, networking is crucial for effectively accessing and sharing information. Online networks are built through connections with individuals, institutions, organizations, and media outlets. It greatly facilitates social media knowledge activities; for example, networks enhance collecting by providing access to shared knowledge and resources. Similarly, knowledge sharing and brokering depend entirely on networks to facilitate the exchange of information between individuals and groups.

2.     Tagging: Tags are keywords assigned to a particular item, serving as metadata describing a data collection. In social media, tags are commonly applied to web pages, messages, posts, photographs, and videos. They provide descriptive information about an item, enabling users to search through extensive collections for relevant content efficiently. Tags may include item content, media type, file format, date, associated individuals, or other pertinent information users desire.

3.     Annotating involves writing brief descriptions about a knowledge object. Annotations are similar to captions for images or notes for personal reference, helping quickly recall a document's topic or purpose. They can be used personally or to enhance the understanding of shared knowledge objects with others. Annotations complement tags by providing more detailed information beyond what is included in a tag.

 Reference: Dennen, V. P. (forthcoming). Networked Knowledge Activities. Excerpt from Social Media for Active Learning.